Introduction

The Qur'an is the pure, perfect, uncorruptible message to humanity from God . This article is a collection of notes about why we can be sure of this statement.

Proven success

Before we explore the details of the more rigorous evidence about the authenticity of the Holy Qur'an, let us first briefly look at some empirical evidence. Anyone who has studied the life of Prophet Muhammad cannot help but wonder about his remarkable life and personality. Muhammad picked up the arrogant idol worshippers of Makkah and the warring, unsophisticated tribes of Yathrib and within 22 years turned them into the leaders of an Islamic nation which lasted for several hundred years and which became the greatest empire in the history of mankind. As well as a prophet, Muhammad was the world's greatest statesman, and he still had time to be the perfect husband, father, friend and teacher of humanity. He is the perfect role model for every human being.

Michael Hart, a well-known scientist and historian, compiled a book entitled "The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History", published in 1978, ranking 100 personalities from the history of humanity. He ranked Muhammad as number one, and wrote "My choice of Muhammad to lead the best of the world's most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels." In response to criticism that he had ranked Muhammad before Jesus (peace upon him) especially that there are roughly twice as many Christians as Muslims in the world today, Hart wrote "First, Muhammad played a far more important role in the development of Islam than Jesus did in the development of Christianity... Furthermore, Muhammad (unlike Jesus) was a secular as well as a religious leader. In fact, as the driving force behind the Arab conquests, he may well rank as the most influential political leader of all time." There are many more eminent non-Muslim scholars that have studied the life of Muhammad and the Islamic nation, and written in praise of it. I have collected some of them in my Quotes about Islam section.

But what has this got to do with our study of the Qur'an's authenticity? The point is, everything that Muhammad did and everything he teached his people to do is a direct application of the Qur'an. When A'isha, wife of Muhammad was asked about his personality, she said "His personality was the Qur'an," and Muhammad's closest companions described him as a "Qur'an walking on Earth."

The Qur'an is a book about life. The main message from God in this book is to follow its instructions so that we may be successful in this life and in our life after death. We can't yet tell anything about the after-life from our current position, but here we have perfect examples of this promised success based on applying the Qur'an in this life. No other book of secular or religious origin has been the basis of so much success and happiness. A book with this quality can only be from God , since He is the only one who knows the perfect path through life, and who can send us such a book as guidance to it.

The success of the Islamic nation initiated by Muhammad was not only in its size and power, but also at the levels of international relations, economic prosperity and scientific advancement, as well as understanding, cooperation and happiness inside the civilization itself. This has never been repeated throughout history, and unlike any other great power, nobody can claim that the Islamic empire has done any act of unwarranted violence or unfairly used its power against another nation. We may also note that the Islamic nation was not completely dependent on Muhammad's initial success as its leader. Without the Qur'an to guide the Muslims, the Islamic empire would have fallen quickly, but it went on for several hundred years. It started to get weak when the people started taking the Qur'an for granted, but rose again at the time of Salah A-Deen. Success and happiness is proven to be a direct consequence of applying the Qur'an to our lives.

For a more detailed account of the success of the Qur'an's way of life and the Islamic "nation that will not die", please refer to my section about Success of the Qur'an as a way of life.

A reliable messenger

Many accusations have been made that Prophet Muhammad did not really receive the Qur'an by revelation from God , both by his contemporaries and after his death and in the present day. Some of these people have claimed, for example, that Muhammad wrote the Qur'an himself or made it all up. However, this accusation quickly becomes illogical as soon as we examine some facts about Muhammad's life and personality .

• Muhammad was illiterate. Until his death, he could not read or write one letter, let alone compose such a sophisticated book!
• Muhammad was an orphan, and worked as a shepherd and then as a trader. He mostly lived a life of solitude before he received the first revelation, and did not have contact with any scholars of religion or knowledge. There was nobody he knew that could have helped him compose such a book.
• It is his enemies, the pagans of Quraysh, who would be the first to confirm the title that they gave Muhammad : the honest and trustworthy one.
• The revelations of the Qur'an came to Muhammad part-by-part over more than 20 years, and not in any particular order that corresponds to the final book. This is not the way you design a book that will guide a nation to glory!

As you can see, the personality and life of Muhammad makes him a perfectly transparent medium of transmission. He's honest and reliable, so won't change the message he is carrying, he's illiterate, so he can't have made it up or changed it anyway, and there was nobody to influence or help him compose the Qur'an as claimed. That was all for a reason, God made his conditions that way so we would have no doubt.

When Muhammad received a revelation of the Qur'an, he would recite the passage as it was revealed to him, he would instruct his companions to write it down, and note which chapter and verse number it corresponds to. The revelations came to him in an order which had nothing to do with the order in the final book, but instead each revelation came relevant to a current situation at the time. Yet, when the Qur'an was finally compiled, it's structure and logical order was perfect. How could an illiterate man have designed something so diverse and sophisticated in it's constituents, yet perfectly organized as a whole, unless it was a revelation from God ?

A perfect language

The Qur'an was delivered to us from God in Arabic. If we translate the Qur'an into any other language, it is no longer the Qur'an, and is considered as good as a commentary or explanation of the Qur'an in the other language. The significance of this and of the choice of Arabic as the language of revelation is a bit complicated and needs some thought.

Indeed, no other language on Earth could possibly have been suitable as the language of the Qur'an. Muslims believe that God had chosen this language before creation to be the one for His eternal message. Arabic has some unique properties that God has built into it to make it a fitting medium for His message, and then He somehow led people to use this language on Earth so that they may receive the Qur'an in it.

To be fitting as the language of an eternal message, we need a language that people will always understand in exactly the same way. One of the striking facts about Arabic is that it is the only langauge still commonly used whose meanings and structure has not changed through time. Not only that, but the way Arabic words are put together guarantees this will always be the case. You cannot add random words to Arabic or change the meaning of a word. Each word has a 3- or 4-letter "root" which expresses a certain concept, and the way this root is metamorphosed gives us verbs, adjectives, etc. based on the same concept. An added or changed word would immediately stand out as not fitting in the system.

The beauty of the use of Arabic in the Qur'an is how the full meaning of each and every word with all its connotations applies perfectly in each context. This is also why accurate translation of the Qur'an is impossible. A word may carry a complex meaning that, during translation, is lost. Instead, what is translated is just one aspect of the meaning according to the interpretation of the translator. In the Arabic Qur'an, if a word or phrase has multiple interpretations, their implications are all true, thus there is no ambiguity in the Qur'an. Who but God could choose words so perfectly throughout the whole book?

One point to note is that there is nothing holy about the choice of Arabic or the Arabs in particular. We are told in the Qur'an that it is in Arabic only because the Prophet Muhammad was sent to the Arabs, and God always delivers His message in the language of its first receivers so that may understand it and spread it. But because the Qur'an is the final testament and an eternal message, God had to make sure the language was equally eternal. God could just as well have delivered the message to the British or the Greeks and granted their language such properties, but the language that He designed just happened to become Arabic because it was to be delivered through Arabs, just as well as through anyone.

This book

All claims refuted

No errors or contradictions

Word use and mention

Numerically sealed

Scientific facts

Prophecies

Abu Lahab

The challenge

[Qur'an 17:88]